Bang Average Football is a game that deserves having people play game after game after game. Not only does it perfectly nail the feeling of playing sports games back in their infancy, it also adds a cozy, Stardew Valley-style frame around the whole thing that you’ll want to do even if you don’t usually like those kinds of sims. It’s an excellent game all-around that does a whole lot of things right.
Seeing as I still have fond memories of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture nearly a decade after I played it, I’ve been eager to see The Chinese Room return to this style of game – and I’m very pleased to see that with Still Wakes the Deep, their return is a huge success
If you go into Heading Out expecting a driving game, you’re probably going to be sorely disappointed. It’s something entirely different from that – and, improbably (given the different genres being thrown together), it works incredibly well.
Capes isn’t so much a super-powered version of XCOM as it is a mediocre XCOM clone that happens to feature superheroes – and there is a difference, as this game illustrates.
I have no doubt that if you loved Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door the first time around there’s nothing here that will detract from your memories – and if you’re looking to check the game out for the first time, it’s probably aged better than most of its contemporaries, the occasionally slow pacing aside.
Even as a single-player adventure, Song of Nunu delivers. It may or may not be a faithful representation of the League of Legends characters, but it says a lot about the quality of this game that none of that really matters.
The neat thing about Dicefolk is the way it defies easy classification, even though it brings together a couple of really well-worn ideas.
Is Metro Simulator 2 the worst game on the Switch? It’s quite possible.
It’s neither fun nor terrible, but rather simply bad – and bad in a way that never quite makes the jump into guilty pleasure/so-bad-it’s-good terrible.
Biomutant is entirely forgettable. There are an abundance of much worse games to play on the Switch, to be sure, but there are also plenty of games that are better, so unless you just want to kill time shooting things in an open world – which, to be fair, is sometimes a wholly understandable impulse – you’re better off avoiding this one entirely.
Little Kitty, Big City is an adorable, delightful gem of a game.
As this new and improved version shows, El Shaddai ASCENSION OF THE METATRON HD Remaster is still very much a game for a very specific niche. Beautiful visuals and an inventive story can only take you so far; at some point the gameplay needs to be there too, and as you’ll see time and again, that’s not the case here.
One playthrough of Children of the Sun is all you need to love the game. Like Hotline Miami a decade ago it stretches the limits of what a puzzler can be into some bloody places, and it pulls it off so well that you can’t help but enjoy every minute of it.
It’s hard to recommend Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 without acknowledging that big DLC-shaped elephant in the corner. It’s not as bad as, say, the NBA 2K series or any others like it that are effectively pay-to-win, but it’s enough that it could put a damper on your enjoyment of an otherwise fun game. That said, if you can ignore the DLC push and just want a flashy racer, this will deliver on that.
Not many games in recent years have come up with something as thrilling as taking on massive robot monsters like you find here, and it’s a mark of how well it’s done in Forbidden West that every time you see one of those familiar flashes, you’ll feel your adrenaline start pumping as you draw your bow and arrow and take aim.
But leaving you wanting more and making you feel good about what you just played are two hallmarks of a very good game – which Botany Manor undeniably is. It’s a relaxing puzzler that doesn’t allow being “cozy” to get in the way of challenging you just enough. If you’re tired of puzzlers that all feel like they’re chasing after a game that almost perfected the genre more than a decade ago, this will be a very pleasant change of pace.
Minishoot Adventures doesn’t break any new ground – even if all these genres aren’t usually together, they’ve all been around long enough that it all feels familiar. But that’s also Minishoot Adventures’ biggest strength: it all feels so familiar that you can’t help but feel like you’re playing an old classic.
Even as someone who likes cats and puzzles – in other words, the target audience – I wouldn’t say I’d recommend Quilts and Cats of Calico unless you’re already a fan of the board game. No matter how cute and cuddly it may present itself as, the reality is much more demanding.
Chasing the Unseen has a bit of an identity crisis. It blends together a bunch of different ideas that don’t quite work and that don’t quite seem to mix...but at the same time, it comes so close that you can’t help but be both fascinated and frustrated by the end result.
Does Princess Peach: Showtime! reach the level of, say, Super Mario Bros. Wonder? Probably not. But it’s certainly on par with any of the solo Luigi or Yoshi outings we’ve had. Here’s hoping that we don’t have to wait another two decades for Peach to get another starring role, because this one is well worth your time.